According to the May 3rd, 2011 Montreal Gazette article "Star Liberal MP Squeezes in," one of the liberal party star candidates and Canada's first man in space, Marc Garneau is slightly leading in his home riding of Westmount-Ville-Marie and has likely won re-election.
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| Liberal problems according to Greg Perry. |
But the race was close.
The article even has Garneau conceding at one point and stating that " the Liberals were powerless against "the large, cataclysmic tectonic shift" that happened in Canadian politics Monday night."
He might have been right concerning the bigger picture, but as reported by the May 3rd, 2011 Globe and Mail, the final election results for the Westmount-Ville-Marie riding show Garneau elected with 37.2%/ 15,361 votes against NDP candidate Joanne Corbeil with 35.6%/ 14,703 votes, Conservative candidate Neil Drabkin with 17.5%/ 7,216 votes and Bloc Québécois candidate Véronique Roy with 5.5%/ 2,290 votes.
It's good for the space systems industry that Garneau personally was re-elected, no matter what his political affiliation.
Last Wednesday at a Canadian Advanced Technology Association (CATA) teleforum conference call focused on innovation, entrepreneurship and public policy, Garneau even responded to a question on the use of flow-through tax credits to spur growth in the clean energy, resources, health, biosciences, and digital technology sectors by indicating that these sorts of tax credits would also be useful to grow the space systems sector.
The use of flow-through tax credits (originally designed for the mining and resource industry as outlined in my June 20th, 2010 post "Mining as a Model for the Commercial Space Industry") has been discussed off and on among commercial space experts for quite awhile and it's about time for this to finally gain traction in the wider public policy sphere.
Options and policies like this will need to be discussed among the surviving liberal leaders (and Garneau is certainly one of those now) if they ever expect to govern again.
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| D. Sellah, the new NDP MP for St. Bruno/St. Hubert. |
This might even be something for NDP leader Jack Layton to look at since the Canadian Auto Workers, Canada's largest private sector union also represents aerospace employees at Boeing Canada (Local 2169), Bombardier/ de Havilland (Local 112), Cascade Aerospace (Local 114), CMC Electronics, Magellan Aerospace/ Bristol (Local 3005) and Pratt and Whitney Canada (Local 510).
Of course, the overall election results show the Conservative Party under Stephen Harper with 167 seats and a majority government, the New Democratic Party under Jack Layton with 102 seats and official opposition status, the Liberal Party under Michael Ignatieff reduced to a rump of 34 seats and the Bloc Québécois under Gilles Duceppe essentially wiped out as a party with only four seats remaining.
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| John H Chapman Space Centre, also in St. Hubert. |
As a result of the election, it is expected that the new government will move quickly to re-introduce the FY 2011 federal budget, originally tabled in the House of Commons on March 22nd, but not adopted before the dissolution of Parliament on March 26, 2011.
This existing federal budget includes a proposal for a twelve to eighteen month review of the combined "aerospace industry" which will include the Canadian space systems industry and the Canadian Space Agency (CSA) and will also supersede previous reviews as outlined in my March 18th, 2011 post "The Difference Between "Aviation" and "Space"."
In essence, the new review means that the 2008 long term space plan (LTSP), undertaken by CSA President Steve MacLean as part of a mandate from then Industry Minister Jim Prentice in this September 2nd, 2008 speech, is finally and officially dead.
It will be interesting to see what the new conservative majority government comes up with to replace the LTSP. Perhaps the space systems industry should also start lobbying the incoming Harper government about flow-through tax credits.
COMMENTS:
From: Kieran Carroll
(I'm still unable to get the "Post a Comment" link to work on your blog site)
You wrote:
According to the May 3rd, 2011 Montreal Gazette article "Star Liberal MP Squeezes in," one of the liberal party star candidates and Canada's first man in space, Marc Garneau is slightly leading in his home riding of Westmount-Ville-Marie and has likely won re-election...[according to the] Globe and Mail, the final election results for the Westmount-Ville-Marie riding show Garneau elected with 37.2%/ 15,361 votes against NDP candidate Joanne Corbeil with 35.6%/ 14,703 votes...The elections Canada's web-site (http://enr.elections.ca/ElectoralDistricts_e.aspx?type=2&criteria=marc%20garneau) generally confirms those preliminary results. It says that Marc Garneau won Westmount-Ville Marie, with 15,346 votes (37.2%), ahead of the NDP candidate who received 14,704.
- Kieran
Editors Note: Send your questions, queries, concerns and comments to mr.chuck.black@gmail.com and I'll make sure they get posted.
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